Most real estate agents and brokers currently spend a great deal of time and money to maintain a presence on the Internet for exchanging information from agent to clients and/or prospective clients. The terms “agents” and “clients” refer to people (or business entities) who wish buy, sell or participate in a real property transaction, and are a subset of the term “user”. The term “user” refers to any individual that is interested in searching real estate property listings. These listings provides a user a limited amount of information concerning select properties offered for sale through the Multiple Listing Service (hereinafter “MLS”). Known property listing web sites provide for real time home searches in databases populated by MLS information, where searching is based on a set of input search criteria. Users generally need to type alpha-numeric data into search fields in order to specify their search criteria. This type of data query can be problematic for users who are unfamiliar with geographic and infrastructure features related to property listings.
As computers and computer networks become more and more able to access a wide variety of information, people are demanding more ways to obtain information. Specifically, people now expect to have access, on the road, in the home, or in the office, to information previously available only from a permanently-connected personal computer hooked to an appropriately provisioned network (i.e., world wide web or Internet). They want to access information via their cell phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), palm tops, and other wireless devices in a timely and accurate manner via an appropriately provisioned network (i.e., world wide web or Internet). They want information when traveling, whether locally, domestically, or internationally, in an easy-to-use, portable device. In addition to viewing information, people want to be able to search available information according to specific, user defined search parameters. Portability generally requires a device small in size, which in turn limits the number of data entry keys and the amount of memory and available processing power. In addition, ultra portable devices often must be held in one hand or not held at all, so that data entry must be one-handed or no-handed. These limitations in the device generally must be compensated for by the user. For example, the user may have to use a limited keyboard such as a telephone keypad, or limited speech recognition capabilities. The need to fill in several search fields can be cumbersome and difficult for users when searching information via constrained devices, such as cell phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), palm tops, and other wireless devices.